NO LAND’S MAN: SOVEREIGNTY, LEGAL STATUS, AND THE PRODUCTION OF STATELESSNESS AMONG HIGHLANDERS IN NORTHERN THAILAND A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Amanda Leigh Flaim May 2015 © 2015 Amanda Leigh Flaim NO LAND’S MAN: SOVEREIGNTY, LEGAL STATUS, AND THE PRODUCTION OF STATELESSNESS AMONG HIGHLANDERS IN NORTHERN THAILAND Amanda Leigh Flaim, Ph. D. Cornell University 2015 Globally, over 10 million people lack the recognition and rights of citizenship. Statelessness among highland communities in Thailand comprises one of the longest- standing situations of protracted exclusion in the world, with disastrous effects on highlanders’ lives and livelihoods. While statelessness is generally associated with acute deprivations, statelessness is neither new nor static in the hills of Thailand. Indeed, researchers and highlanders themselves have argued that highlanders maintained relative autonomy until the mid-20th century by living beyond the reach of lowland states—by being stateless. How, then, has statelessness come to be associated with lack? How is statelessness produced, and how are inequalities in life trajectories formed along the line of citizenship where they once did not exist? In this study, I examine the ways that the Thai state registers, (mis)understands, incorporates, and excludes highlanders, and the ways that highlanders (mis)understand, seek to access, and negotiate the state. Drawing on multi-scalar ethnography and extensive survey research, I show that statelessness persists among highlanders despite efforts by the government of Thailand to solve it. Second, I argue that statelessness is produced, not despite, but rather because of the ostensibly rational regime of evidentiary procedure in which status is adjudicated. Specifically, I show that the Thai state produces and privileges contingent, incomplete, and flawed evidence as the standard against which individuals must prove their claims to belong. And finally, I argue that state restrictions on movement among non-citizens are contributing directly and indirectly to inequalities in educational attainment and to the impoverishment of highland livelihoods. Theoretically, findings from this dissertation suggest that citizenship and statelessness are both unstable, yet ultimately transformable status categories that refract historically specific practices of sovereign power and claims to rule upon which they are based. On a political level, findings suggest that efforts to improve human rights will fall short in situations where legal status remains unresolved. Additionally, findings also indicate that the global campaign to resolve statelessness must recognize and monitor state efforts to manage, and ultimately restrict, access to citizenship through identification regimes that are often promoted for the ostensible protection of legal identity. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Amanda Leigh Flaim is the daughter of an agricultural economist and a geography teacher, and she grew up with a fierce desire to see and understand the world. After graduating from Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, she moved to China to work as an English teacher, and then attended Stanford where she earned a Masters Degree in International Comparative Education. From California, she moved on to UNICEF in Italy where she worked in the child trafficking prevention research team, and then to UNESCO in Thailand where she began her long-term research agenda on statelessness and trafficking prevention in the Mekong Subregion. Although she remains focused on statelessness in Southeast Asia, her research has also taken her to Nepal where she led a national survey of statelessness in the country for UNHCR in 2011. After living in big cities, she was skeptical about Ithaca, but she now considers it home. It was in Ithaca that she met her love, had a baby, and worked—and worked and worked—toward the completion of this dissertation. Today, Amanda, her husband Daniel, and their son, Simon, live in Durham, North Carolina where she teaches about statelessness, humanitarian policy, and qualitative and mixed-methods research methods at Duke University. She loves Durham, but she craves Thai street food and misses the Ithaca Farmer’s Market every single day. v To Miju and Daqbir, my most trusted and brave guides. Geeqlanq heeq ma. vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS During a winter holiday, villagers in a small Akha community in northern Thailand leave their homes in the evening, and walk house-to-house in a boisterous and joyful procession with guitars and firecrackers, singing a song of thanks and blessings to each and every household. They visit every single house before retiring to sleep. “Geeqlanq heeq ma day, Geeqlanq heeq ma day, Geeqlanq heeq ma day, a- yeor, ayoeq, Djosardoeqmiar, Djosardoeqmiar, Geeqlanq heeq ma day, a-yeor, ayoeq!” Thank you, thank you, thank you, my brothers and sisters. Be well and take care. Be well and take care. Thank you, my brothers and sisters. This is the song I feel I owe each and every one of the extraordinary members of my own extraordinarily generous ‘village’ in Ithaca, Thailand, and beyond. For ten long years, you have taught me, encouraged me, pushed me, protected me, supported me, (often) fed me, (sometimes) housed me, and always inspired me. To each of you, thank you. I am so very blessed and so very grateful. In Ithaca: Lindy Williams, Co-Chair and SGPB Parfait Eloundou-Enyegue, Co-Chair and GPB, Magnus Fiskesjo, committee member Jason Cons, committee member Marygold Walsh-Dilley (de facto committee member) I also owe special thanks to Kasia Paprocki and Anders Bjornberg, Chuck Geisler, Mary Jo Dudley, Djahane Salehabadi, Megan Gremelspacher Swindal, Marion Dixon, Jum Warritay, Dela Kusi-Appouh, Ian Bailey, Sara Keene, Daniel Lumonye, Roanne Bosch, Tess Pendergrast, Alice Beban and family, Shelley Feldman, Alexandra vii Denes, Edmund Oh and Nicole Khi, the Mizrachi family, Erin Lentz, Jessica and Greg Pac, Scott and Jenn Sanders, Kevin Dilley, Fouad Makki, Phil McMichael, David Brown, Wendy Wolford, Robin Blakely, Laurie Johnson, Cindy Twardokus, Emme Edmonds, the graduate students of Cornell SEAP, and Laure Conklin Kamp. In Thailand: David A. Feingold, committee member and champagne purveyor Jeerasak ‘Daqbir’ Jupoh and family Phi Miju (Chutima Morlaeku) and Phi Ayoe (Professor Wang) and family I also owe a million wais of gratitude to Heather Peters, Stephanie and Aaron Koning, ‘Ray Rai’ Rachel Dunn and Danai K., the fabulous staff of IMPECT, Taylor, Malavika and Penny Lowe-Reddy, Khun Chanida Puranapun at the Research Center for Sustainable Development at Chiang Mai University, Ajarn Prasit Leepreecha at the Center for Ethnic Studies and Development, Vanessa Achilles, Peerayot Sidonrusmee, Khun ‘Gift’ Puntharee Israngjul na Ayudthaya, Ajarn Noppadon Kannika, and friends at ABAC Poll, and Khun Madee at the Bureau for Social Development and Human Security. To the villagers in Thailand who taught me true selflessness, but whose names I cannot include, Thank you. Beyond: The debt I owe my family is one that I can only hope to repay for the rest of my life. For your love, encouragement, belief in me, and countless means of support, thank you. This would not have been possible without the constant support of my mother, Mary Prosser Flaim, my father, Sam Flaim, my step-mother, Kathryn Roth, and my brother and sister-in-law, Michael and Marie Flaim. To my other set of viii marvelous parents, Susan and David Ahlquist, thank you so very much for every moment of unwavering support. To Brooke and Bryant Carlson, Aaron and Elizabeth Ahlquist, Savty and Granddad, and my whole extended family, thank you. And Daniel. For everything, thank you. This research was facilitated by The National Research Council of Thailand, and was made possible through generous grants from the Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Fellowship, the Southeast Asian Studies Program at Cornell, and the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: THE SOCIAL AND THEORETICAL PROBLEM OF STATELESSNESS 1.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 1.2 The Problem of Statelessness.................................................................................. 12 1.3 Research Questions ................................................................................................. 22 1.4 The Problem with Statelessness .............................................................................. 22 1.5 From Identifying ‘the Stateless’ to Recognizing Sovereignty in Status ................. 25 1.6 Overview of Dissertation ........................................................................................ 27 CHAPTER 2: THE HISTORY OF SOVEREIGNTY AND EXCLUSION IN THE HIGHLANDS 2.1 Chapter Overview ................................................................................................... 32 2.2 Narratives of Sovereign Rule: Constructing Highlanders as State-Invaders .......... 32 2.3 The Colonial Encounter: Constructing the Nation-and-State ................................. 34 2.4 “Hill Tribes”: Between Boundaries of the State and Borders of the Nation .......... 38 2.5 Denial of Legal Identity and the Expansion of Identification................................. 46 2.6 Challenging the Boundaries of the Nation, Reinforcing State Sovereignty?.......... 47 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH AND